I've found there have been quite a few quick battles. Did you 'dodge' many battles? I didn't, and I never really had trouble with finding a quick battle or two. It's nothing new, grinding, really. There are always hard battles to be had, though, which is possibly the difference - usually in FF's you can always level to the point that you'll be able to not think much and just battle lots of lesser enemies like crazy to get some items or something. This time around there are level caps, so to speak, which stop you from really being able to do that (although I found when I was capped it was easy to walk through a lot of battles).